Towards IS-enabled Sustainable Communities – A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

The trend of urbanization leads to several environmental problems such as shortage of resource, pollution, and rising carbon emissions. In the smart city context sustainable communities are considered as promising measures to tackle these issues. The technological evolution of the recent years offers versatile opportunities to convince people in their behavior and the potential of information systems to support ecological improvements gains increasing importance and interest in research. In this paper we propose a theoretical framework for the design of citizen-centric environmental sustainable information systems to build sustainable communities in smart cities. The framework considers theories and counter measures from psychological, social, environmental, and IS science to create a holistic architecture for green IS implementations. The goal is to drive further research and practical implementations in this domain

The State of the Art in Smart City Research – A Literature Analysis on Green IS Solutions to Foster Environmental Sustainability

Environmental sustainability is one of the most critical issues worldwide, concerning every individual. The main objective in this area is to preserve scarce resources and reduce CO2 emissions in order to prevent environmental degradation. In recent years the potential of information systems (IS) as a driver for environmental sustainability has emerged under the term “Green IS”. Given that cities represent a huge share of environmental degradation due to factors such as mobility, energy and water consumption, and waste production, the municipal domain offers huge potentials in terms of sustainability. The advent of smart cites is an attempt to address this concern. In this paper we aim to provide an overview of current publications on environmental sustainability in smart cities, as research in this field is still unstructured. This paper focuses on structuring the research field by providing a research framework to achieve a more holistic view on the application of Green IS. We distinguish between research performed by the IS community and that of related fields, such as urban development, and perform a cross-sectional, exhaustive literature analysis with almost 1,500 articles to uncover the differences and commonalities between the domains

DECODING THE MOTIVATIONAL BLACK BOX – THE CASE OF RANKING, SELF-EFFICACY, AND SUBLIMINAL PRIMING

Game-based IS features are popular means to change behavior. While existing studies indicate a successful impact of gamified IS features, others show opposite effects. However, there are no studies that have investigated the underlying motivational processes of single gamified IS features and the additional possible support of subliminally primed IS features for the desired goal attainment. To address this gap, we examine the interaction between users and the gamified feature ‘Ranking’ on concentration enhancement, while studying the moderation effects of self-efficacy and a subliminally primed IS feature in a laboratory experiment (N=407). Therefore, our paper sheds light on the theoretically and practically relevant question: how can gamification features lead to proper interaction with the user to effectively support desired goal attainment. The results show varying reactions of either positive or negative feedback, to the ranking, depending on individual’s self-efficacy. While test persons with low self-efficacy show better performance results receiving negative feedback, participants with high self-efficacy perceptions reveal better performance rates receiving positive feedback. Furthermore, we could not observe a significant impact of the subliminally primed feature regarding mechanisms of the consciously perceived game feature ‘Ranking’ on concentration enhancement

FACILITATING E-MOBILITY THROUGH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES – DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A DYNAMIC BATTERY-LEASING BUSINESS MODEL

The electric mobility sector – an important pillar for counteracting climate change – is facing a sluggish market development. In this paper, we present a new dynamic battery-leasing business model that can play a key role in promoting the market introduction of electric mobility. Unlike medium- to long-term approaches for creating additional value from electric vehicles (e.g., demand response or vehicle-to-grid), the business model we propose can be applied in the short run as all necessary prerequisites are already fulfilled. To demonstrate, we proceed in two major steps. First, we design the digital technology–enabled business model that breaks with current business logics by actively involving users in the value generation process. The concept contributes to reducing battery degradation effects and thus increases the residual value of the batteries. Second, we test the underlying hypothesis of our business model – the user’s willingness to follow a certain charging guideline in order to extend battery lifetime – using a comprehensive conjoint analysis. Thus, our research demonstrates how information systems can be used to encourage green choices by consumers

Understanding the Impact that Response Failure has on How Users Perceive Anthropomorphic Conversational Service Agents: Insights from an Online Experiment

Conversational agents (CAs) have attracted the interest from organizations due to their potential to provide automated services and the feeling of humanlike interaction. Emerging studies on CAs have found that humanness has a positive impact on customer perception and explored approaches for their anthropomorphic design, which comprises both their appearance and behavior. While these studies provide valuable knowledge on how to design humanlike CAs, we still do not sufficiently understand this technology’s limited conversational capabilities and their potentially detrimental impact on user perception. These limitations often lead to frustrated users and discontinued CAs in practice. We address this gap by investigating the impact of response failure, which we understand a CA’s inability to provide a meaningful reply, in a service context. To do so, we draw on the computers are social actors paradigm and the theory of the uncanny valley. Via an experiment with 169 participants, we found that 1) response failure harmed the extent to which people perceived CAs as human and increased their feelings of uncanniness, 2) humanness (uncanniness) positively (negatively) influenced familiarity and service satisfaction, and 3) the response failure had a significant negative impact on user perception yet did not lead to a sharp drop as the uncanny valley theory posits. Thus, our study contributes to better explaining the impact that text-based CAs’ failure to respond has on customer perception and satisfaction in a service context in relation to the agents’ design

Towards Design Principles for Experimental Simulations in Virtual Reality – Learning from Driving Simulators

Experiments play an important role in Information Systems research. In this area, Virtual Reality (VR) technologies can serve as a tool for enabling and conducting research. e.g., to investigate human behavior in specific situations. A prime example is VR-supported driving simulators that allow researchers in the automotive domain to gather knowledge while reducing cost and complexity compared to field studies with real cars. We argue that the use of carefully designed VR-supported experiments might allow researchers to get deeper insights into human behavior. Thus, we derive design principles for VR Experiments as an artifact from the literature about VR-supported driving simulations that have been accepted as a useful tool for research in their domain

How are you Feeling? Inferring Emotions through Movements in the Metaverse

Metaverses are immersive virtual worlds in which people interact as avatars. There is emerging interest in understanding how metaverse users behave and perceive activities and tasks. Our understanding of users’ behavior within metaverses is limited. This study examines the role of emotions in the movement of individuals. We therefore implement a metaverse setting using virtual reality technology and development tools. In our study, we manipulated negative emotions and tracked the movements of our participants. We show how negative emotion influences movements in a metaverse setting. Based on a literature review, we select and calculate movement features to train a support vector machine. As our result, we present a novel way to infer the negative emotions of metaverse users which will help create more engaging and immersive experiences that cater to user’s emotions and behaviors. Our study provides preliminary evidence for the potential utilization of movement data in the metaverse

EXPLORING THREAT-SPECIFIC PRIVACY ASSURANCES IN THE CONTEXT OF CONNECTED VEHICLE APPLICATIONS

Connected vehicles enable a wide range of use cases, often facilitated by smartphone apps and involving extensive processing of driving-related data. Since information about actual driving behavior or even daily routines can be derived from this data, the question of privacy arises. We explore the impact of privacy assurances on driving data sharing concerns. Specifically, we consider two data-intensive cases: usage-based insurance and traffic hazard warning apps. We conducted two experimental comparisons to investigate whether and how privacy-related perceptions about vehicle data sharing can be altered by different types of text-based privacy assurances on fictional app store pages. Our results are largely inconclusive, and we did not find clear evidence that text-based privacy guarantees can significantly alter privacy concerns and download intentions. Our results suggest that general and threat-specific privacy assurance statements likely yield no or only negligible benefits for providers of connected vehicle apps regarding user perceptions

Disruption on the Way? The Role of Mobile Applications for Electric Vehicle Diffusion

Disruptive eco-innovations that replace existing unsustainable modes of transportation could contribute to achieve substantial improvements in environmental sustainability. Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to provide a more sustainable means of individual mobility, but, thus far, customer adoption remains relatively low. Following disruptive innovations theory developed by Christensen, the disruptive potential of EVs can be realized if their performance on traditional attributes that customer\u27s value improves. Here, information systems can play a key role. In this paper, we use a large scale (n = 1461) empirical investigation to examine which attributes must be addressed and assess the ability of existing mobile applications (apps) to do so. Our results indicate that apps contribute to a more reliable and convenient EV-user experience. We shed light on the role of apps in connecting the vehicle, the infrastructure and the user and in creating a digital eco-system that enhances the diffusion of EVs